Biography
Pianist Jeanne Golan focuses her career on creating programs that blend longstanding classics with modern compositions. She has also devoted considerable attention to performing and recording works by creators who suffered persecution or death during the Holocaust.
Born July 12, 1959, in Natick, Massachusetts, Golan was raised in that community. Her mother, Irene Soble Golan, served as music teacher and choir director at the local Temple Israel, where she included pieces by Jewish Renaissance composers in the repertoire. Golan completed her undergraduate studies at Yale University in 1981 before earning master’s and doctoral degrees at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York.
Throughout the United States she has maintained an active presence as concerto soloist, recitalist, chamber musician, and vocal accompanist. In the last of those roles she has partnered with mezzo-soprano Mary Nessinger on the “Cycles & Sequels” project, which commissions new pieces drawing inspiration from established repertory. Orchestral appearances include engagements with the American Symphony Chamber Orchestra, the Greenwich Symphony Orchestra, and the Hunter Symphony Orchestra at Hunter College in New York. Chamber and contemporary collaborations encompass the Lark and Cavani Quartets, the Philip Glass Ensemble, and Friends & Enemies of New Music. Solo recitals have taken her to Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center in New York, as well as to Harvard and Yale Universities and to concert series across the United States and Europe.
She has presented the complete piano sonatas of Viktor Ullmann, who was murdered in the Holocaust, and devoted an entire program to his music at the Ravinia Festival in the Chicago area.
Golan’s recording career began with the Albany label, where she issued several albums devoted primarily to contemporary music, starting with Time Tracks in 1996. After signing with the Steinway & Sons label she released a cycle of Ullmann’s sonatas in 2012. Two additional Steinway & Sons releases followed: a 2018 collection of chamber music by Mieczyslaw Weinberg and the 2020 album It Takes One to Tango, featuring tango-inspired compositions that include works by composers affected by Nazi persecution. She serves as professor of music at the State University of New York at Nassau.
Born July 12, 1959, in Natick, Massachusetts, Golan was raised in that community. Her mother, Irene Soble Golan, served as music teacher and choir director at the local Temple Israel, where she included pieces by Jewish Renaissance composers in the repertoire. Golan completed her undergraduate studies at Yale University in 1981 before earning master’s and doctoral degrees at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York.
Throughout the United States she has maintained an active presence as concerto soloist, recitalist, chamber musician, and vocal accompanist. In the last of those roles she has partnered with mezzo-soprano Mary Nessinger on the “Cycles & Sequels” project, which commissions new pieces drawing inspiration from established repertory. Orchestral appearances include engagements with the American Symphony Chamber Orchestra, the Greenwich Symphony Orchestra, and the Hunter Symphony Orchestra at Hunter College in New York. Chamber and contemporary collaborations encompass the Lark and Cavani Quartets, the Philip Glass Ensemble, and Friends & Enemies of New Music. Solo recitals have taken her to Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center in New York, as well as to Harvard and Yale Universities and to concert series across the United States and Europe.
She has presented the complete piano sonatas of Viktor Ullmann, who was murdered in the Holocaust, and devoted an entire program to his music at the Ravinia Festival in the Chicago area.
Golan’s recording career began with the Albany label, where she issued several albums devoted primarily to contemporary music, starting with Time Tracks in 1996. After signing with the Steinway & Sons label she released a cycle of Ullmann’s sonatas in 2012. Two additional Steinway & Sons releases followed: a 2018 collection of chamber music by Mieczyslaw Weinberg and the 2020 album It Takes One to Tango, featuring tango-inspired compositions that include works by composers affected by Nazi persecution. She serves as professor of music at the State University of New York at Nassau.
Albums
